Peer to peer communications may depend on establishing connections between selected entities in a mesh, or network. Entities may have one or several addresses. Because the topology changes, these addresses may often vary as the entities move in the network. A classic architectural solution to this addressing problem is to assign to each entity a stable name, and to “resolve” this name when a connection is needed. This name to address translation must be robust, and must also allow for easy and fast updates.
Existing serverless name resolution protocols may use multi-level caches that resolve a name to a node ID by using a linear door-to-door approach in which a resolution message is sent from one node to another, each node directing the message to a known node closer to the target, until the target node is finally reached. In this process, each intermediate node may return an acknowledgement message to the initiating node via the established resolution path. The resolution message may be carried contemporaneously through the creation of the resolution path and may be delivered to the target node to verify the existence of the target node.
Because the message may be transferred through a set of intermediate nodes that make up the resolution path, there may be a potential for compromise. This may happen intentionally, such as when there exists a malicious node, or unintentionally. Also, because the message handling is entrusted to a series of nodes, it may be difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain whether a message is still in transit or has failed, and thus monitoring of message transmission is difficult. Further, because the series of nodes may be numerous, network traffic due to resolution messages may overly burden the network.
Therefore, a more secure and efficient name resolution procedure may be needed for server-less, multi-level cache name resolution protocols.